To make the list, a company must combine innovative technology with an effective business model that is both practical and ambitious, enabling the company to set a 12-month agenda.

AI technologies, including speech recognition technology, deep learning, and face recognition, as well as cloud services, gene sequencing, and solar energy technology, are keywords for the listed companies.

Large-scale business operations are important, but a company’s ambition is given special attention.

As MIT Technology Review evaluated, iFlyTek’s voice assistant technology is the “Siri of China,” and its real-time portable translator puts AI to remarkable use, overcoming dialect, slang, and background noise to translate between Chinese and a dozen other languages with surprising accuracy.

In addition, the company Face ++ was said to pioneer new uses of face recognition technology, from fraud investigation to “smile to pay,” according to the review.